Review: 'Once Upon a Time in Wonderland' is gorgeous but muddled

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Peter Gadiot and Sophie Lowe star in the ABC spinoff series “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.”

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Peter Gadiot and Sophie Lowe star in the ABC spinoff series “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.”

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Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (Thursday, 7 p.m., ABC/Ch. 4) gets off to a gorgeous but underwhelming start.

If it wasn't a spinoff of "Once Upon a Time," I might be more optimistic. But the original series started strong and got lost in multiple plotlines to the point where I gave up ... so I'm more than a bit worried that that will happen again.

In "Wonderland," Alice (Sophie Lowe) has returned from her adventures and is locked up in a hospital, where they're about to give her a lobotomy. You know that's not going to happen, of course, and before long she's back down the rabbit hole trying to save the love of her life - a genie named Cyrus (Peter Gaidot).

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p class="TEXT_w_Indent">There's another genie on board - Jafar (Naveen Andrews, "Lost") from "Aladdin." How he ends up in Wonderland is not really explained.

This does not come close to adhering to Louis Carroll's fiction, you might have noticed.

"Wonderland" is kind of dark, kind of confusing and only moderately entertaining. If nothing else, all the CGI iis really pretty cool to look at.